Seen and heard on the Notre Dame campus

Published: Autumn 2006

The founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, Father Basil Anthony Moreau, CSC, moved one step closer to sainthood in April when the Vatican officially recognized a miraculous healing attributed to Moreau’s intercession. The decree paved the way for the priest’s beatification ceremony in LeMans, France, in 2007. Beatification is the last step before sainthood may be considered. Father Moreau, a French diocesan priest and seminary professor, died in 1873 at age 73. . . . Another potential Holy Cross saint-in-the-making, Father Patrick Peyton, CSC, was given the title “Servant of God” in 2001. The designation recognizes that his cause for canonization is being formally considered by the Vatican. Peyton ’37, who was born in Ireland, produced hundreds of radio and television shows in the 1940s and ’50s with Hollywood and Broadway stars highlighting Catholic values and preaching the importance of family prayer. Peyton coined the famous slogan, “The family that prays together, stays together.” He died in 1992 at age 83. . . . Dodging cars while crossing Juniper Road on campus has become a thing of the past. In fact, most of Juniper Road on campus has become a thing of the past. During the summer the section of the road from Douglas to the Joyce Center was removed in anticipation of greatly increased pedestrian traffic to the new Jordan Hall of Science. A short piece of the roadway north of Edison Road to the Joyce Center will remain in service until next year when other campus improvements are completed. . . . In late May and early June, Notre Dame President Father John Jenkins, CSC, ’76, ’78M.A. led a six-member University delegation to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan to gain a better understanding of the region as well as explore possible collaborative ventures with Asian universities. The group, which included Arts and Letters Dean Mark Roche, Vice President for University Relations Louis Nanni ’84, ’88M.A., Assistant Vice President for University Relations David Morrissey, and Professors Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Lin of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, met with government, education and business leaders as well as local Notre Dame clubs. . . . Notre Dame’s School of Architecture has received high marks from two architecture journals. New Urban News, which is devoted to the New Urbanism movement of city planning, ranked Notre Dame second behind the University of Miami. Meanwhile the journal DesignIntelligence placed Notre Dame 12th out of 75 accredited bachelor’s degree programs. The ranking was based on responses from architecture firms assessing how prepared a school’s grads were for “real-world” practice. . . . Once again proving the maxim that one person’s trash is another’s treasure, Notre Dame’s annual From Old2Gold Sale of items left behind by homeward-bound students raised $43,000 for local nonprofit groups. The sum represents 81 tons of furniture, clothing, electronics, books and other items donated by students. . . . Drop boxes scattered last spring around Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s, Holy Cross, Indiana University South Bend and Bethel collected more than 7,000 unwanted books on the ND campus alone, raising $50,000 to support educational programming at the Robinson Community Learning Center in South Bend. The collected books are sold online by Better World Books, a social enterprise founded five years ago by 2001 grads Chris Fuchs, Xavier Helgesen and Jeff Kurtzman. In five years, the business, whose CEO is David Murphy ’80, has collected more than 1.5 million books from 750 colleges and universities, raising more than $750,000 for literacy charities. Mary Murphy ’80, David’s wife, heads up BWB’s campus division in its 12-state southern region, while their daughter Caroline Murphy ’07, is the campus leader for the ND book drive. . . . A trio of two-sport ND athletes made SI.com’s list of the Top 15 Greatest College Athletes: Jeff Samardzija ’07 (#14, football/baseball), Bob Golic ’79 (#12, football/wrestling) and Raghib Ismail ’94 (#9, football/track). Notre Dame was the only school to have three athletes on the greats list. . . . Meanwhile, Irish teams scored their best athletic year in history last year, finishing sixth in the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Directors’ Cup. Previously the University’s best showing had been 11th place. Notre Dame had 44 All-Americans, 14 Academic All-Americans, a league-record 13 Big East championship teams, while 24 teams qualified for postseason play and 13 teams finished nationally in the top 15 of their sport. . . . Interest in Notre Dame football is at an all-time high. The September 9 Penn State game and the September 16 Michigan game are the two highest-requested games in the history of the ticket lottery; four home games are among the top 10 for requests; the November 25 away game at USC is the all-time most requested ND road game. The ND ticket office mailed a record $11.7 million in refunds—more than twice as much as a year ago—to unsuccessful lottery participants in the ticket distribution for contributing alumni, monogram winners, undergraduate parents and benefactors. . . . Concrete proof—literally—of restored Irish football mania is offered by the South Bend Regional Airport. Because of heavier demand for private plane parking space on game days, airport officials decided to fast track the $715,000 expansion of the landing field’s general aviation apron, completing the 1,600-by-200-foot concrete strip late this summer, instead of 2007 as originally planned. At last year’s USC game, parking space was strained to the breaking point when 300 private aircraft landed in South Bend. Since more than 225 planes were expected for the Irish home opener this year, officials prudently decided to move the project up. . . . Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program and its Institute for Educational Initiatives launched an “English as a New Language” (ENL) program last summer for licensed teachers in Catholic schools in which English is a new language for at least 10 percent of the students. The program also is open to bilingual teachers who teach at schools in the United States or abroad where English is not the primary language. Upon completion of the six-class program, two of which are taken during summer session with the remainder online, teachers will earn an ENL license from the state of Indiana, which is honored reciprocally by other states. . . . Meanwhile, after a series of legal moves on both sides, a federal appeals court ruled in July that a lawsuit may proceed against Notre Dame and the U.S. Department of Education over a $500,000 grant to replicate the ACE program at other universities. The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana had filed suit contending the grant violates the First Amendment separation of church and state because the ACE program trains teachers for religious schools. “The University expects to pursue its case at the district court level and feels confident that it has in no way done anything illegal,” said Don Wycliff ’69, Notre Dame associate vice president for public affairs and communication. . . . In July, in Burundi, Africa, Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies co-sponsored the Third International Conference of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network. More than 100 Church leaders, including 14 bishops, and specialists in peace and reconciliation met in the central African country to examine creative ways to lessen conflict in the war-torn region, which includes Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The conference program, list of participants, papers presented at the conference as well as a video of the conference may be accessed at the website http://cpn.nd.edu/. . . . Cathy Mazurkiewicz, the mother of Montana Mazurkiewicz, the 10-year-old boy whose dying wish was to call a football play for Notre Dame died in May of melanoma. Notre Dame Coach Charlie Weis, who met the boy last fall, honored the wish, calling for “pass right” on the first play of the Washington game even though the Irish were on their one-yard line. Brady Quinn ’07 completed the pass to Anthony Fasano ’06 for a gain of 13 yards. Montana’s mother knew her own health was failing at the time but refused to draw attention to herself. . . . “Jesus” earned two As in Spanish courses this summer at Notre Dame. Actor Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Christ in Mel Gibson’s epic film The Passion of the Christ, hopes to earn a degree from Notre Dame and plans to continue studying at the University as his work schedule allows. The 37-year-old is not enrolled in the fall semester but is expected to return to class next summer. . . . The annual U.S. News and World Report ratings ranked Notre Dame No. 20 among national universities, two places lower than last year. Meanwhile, Washington Monthly magazine ranked Notre Dame 13th in its survey of national universities and the Kaplan/Newsweek “How to Get into College” guide lists Notre Dame among the “new Ivies,” schools that it says rival the Ivy League for stature and quality. Other schools on the “new Ivy” list include Emory, New York, Rice, Vanderbilt and Washington universities, UCLA, and the universities of Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia.